I get around in town, and out of town. I come in contact with a large diversity of people, but it seems that nerds are underrepresented every where I go. Sure, I may see a gang of nerds here or there, but I've never went anywhere that was nerd dominated. Except of course, fantasy shops, but I'm not considering that because they are stores.

Where do nerds like to shoot the shit? Another question, where do nerds like to live? City? Suburbs? Any specific cities? My mind is coming up blank here, too.

You don't see many nerds because there aren't many nerds. If you think the number you see is underrepresenting them, that's probably because your expectations are miscalibrated by places like this. Nerds are hugely overrepresented here on this board.

Two other problems, here: First, a lot of nerds hang out online, instead of in any face-to-face location at all. Second, why are you ruling out stores? Most places that anyone hangs out are places that sell something or other. And while nerds do surely buy things at those stores, there's a lot of social activity that goes on in them that isn't just buying and selling: You'll usually see a few tables set up where folks are role-playing or playing card games or whatever.

They stay inside their house/apartment/whatever. That's one of the determining factors of how people become nerds, more interested in things that aren't really that sociable and thus have an underdeveloped sociability about them.

Nerds can be found in droves at Major League Baseball games. The trick is to look for folks 'keeping score'... i.e., logging every pitch, strike/ball, play on a score sheet. It's an old-time practice that kept fans engaged long before mascots, scoreboards and instant access to data. Seems that the current generation of nerds is keeping the ritual alive.

With 25,000-45,000 fans, you will find many dozens of nerds at a baseball game doing this. If you combine this nerd base with the nerd base of adults who bring their fielding glove to a baseball game, you have a virtual nerd army.

Go ahead... find a 35 y/o man with a baseball glove on as a fan at ball game and tell me that ain't a nerd. Same thing goes for the guy keeping score on a score sheet.

A nerd will come along soon to declare this a band name: "Virtual Nerd Army".

Well you see... once we take off our taped up glasses and put on contacts we look like anyone else. We are everywhere and odds are there is a nerd in the next cubical over.

Seriously as a nerd I don't actively seek out large groups of nerds. Nor do I nerd it up 24/7. When I want a drink I go to a bar. When I want to work out I go to a gym. When I want to go for a ride I hop on my Specialized, or my Honda depending on what kind of ride I want. I don't have a nerd hangout, except at friends' homes or the internet. And those are the traditional grounds of the nerd the dark corners of the home and online.

Some may say that makes me less of a nerd. I argue my knowledge of which levels the D&D Magic Missile spell gains additional missiles stands as a strong counterargument (1, 3, 5, 7, & 9 in case you are curious).

Nerds are mostly at home. That's why you don't see them. If you want to spot some in the wild, maybe try a coffee shop, late in the evening?

Mostly nailed it. My friends and I, since we are all huge nerds, actually do socialize. But everyone but me seems to get up after noon and go to bed just before sunrise, which means that by the time people actually want to go out, very little is open. So generally we just go over to someone's place and watch movies and play games.

Edited to add: there's also the cadre that drives out to ham (radio) fests in the buttcrack of West Virginia at 6 in the morning but I am not among them :P

This. At least for me and all the nerds I know. There's a subset of nerds who are interested in doing "outdoorsy" things like LARPing, attending the ren faire, and playing Warhammer 40k at gaming shops. But most of the ones I know (present company included) are computer gaming homebodies. (Though I really like ren faires and will go if invited--those and gaming/anime cons are the best places to see nerds nerding it up en masse)

Some may say that makes me less of a nerd. I argue my knowledge of which levels the D&D Magic Missile spell gains additional missiles stands as a strong counterargument (1, 3, 5, 7, & 9 in case you are curious).

Well, it can't really gain additional missiles at level one can it.

Oh yeah, to the OP: Check out any smallish general aviation airport. 'Bout 95% of pilots are major nerds.

Austin. Apparently we're nerd central, as when I go out on any given day I will see some non0zero quantity of nerd. I'm not going to the game shop either, necessarily, but we have a LOT of software and game companies around here and you can find throngs of nerd around the local restaurants. Nerds do not make their own sandwiches at home, apparently.

The local university is filled with nerds and has several clubs. Back in my day, there was a White Wolf LARP group and a few board gamers. I noticed that there are flyers up now for a Pokemon group, which fills me with oldness.

If you have a local movie theater that plays midnight movies or special showings, try there. If not, just try the opening show of some nerdy movie.

Check your local area to see if there's a chapter of the SCA. Everyone there is some stripe of geek. There's a surprising number of people in the SCA who aren't the Luddites you expect -- they slog around in mud and wool on the weekends and end up in your IT department during the week.

Socialized nerds hang out where everyone else hangs out. They are just usually the "kindy nerdy friend". Guys in my college fraternity were nerds. It was a mostly engineering and business university. By definition, half the students were nerds.

But then you have the ubernerds, which is what I assume the OP is talking about. These kids tend not to hang out at bars or fraternity parties on the weekend. I don't really know what they do since they seem to think different from normal folk.

For example, are school has a "quiet dorm" which is mostly for upper-class nerds. Most other students usually live in a fraternity house or in an off campus house or appartment with their buddies from sophomore year on. Anyhow, my fraternity was throwing a party one Friday night and our ice machine was broken. So my buddy and I snuck into the quiet dorm with some trash bags to take their ice.

So while we are loading up, some nerd walks in on us and is like "are you guys playing a practical joke on the RA! That's AWESOME!!" It did not even occur to him that someone gathering large quantities of ice on a Friday probably was going to be throwing a party later that night.

Go to the nearest role playing game materials store - my 5 year old grand-daughter is playing Magic the Gathering as we speak. She's the youngest one there. She tells me that her birthday if Feb 23rd and I can contribute towards the new box of MtG cards which will be out sometime mid-Feb.

Mensa groups have lots of nerds. They like to discuss things like whether a slinky will go down the down escalator indefinately, or why I can't take your electronic gizmo apart to see how it works. (Note: these are not academic questions - there will be research involved).

I like nerds, even when I can't understand them. They are fascinating to me.

Honestly...all of the IT guys at work love me for just that reason. My boss has to put a work order in and wait for a couple of days for her printer to be fixed. I just call one of the work geeks on my cell phone and complain that my mouse has a dead battery and 3 or 4 of them show up to fix it.

I also have a stash of chocolate covered coffee beans. For nerds...that's better than being hand fed peeled grapes.

A hackerspace or hackspace (also referred to as a hacklab, makerspace or creative space) is a location where people with common interests, usually in computers, technology, science or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and/or collaborate

Do you notice that there's not much consistency here? Some of the people who go to one of these things hate the others. Nerds are not a uniform social group. There may be a diverse set of things that nerds are more commonly found at, but even those events don't consistently have nerds there. Some un-nerdish places have a few nerds at them. If you're asking for a clear distinction between places that nerds go and places they don't, you're not going to get it.